Mary Marrocco

At a Project Rachel retreat, one participant approached a facilitator toward the end of the weekend. “Why?” she asked, incredulous. “Why would someone who’s never had an abortion want to spend their time helping us who have?”

A certain young woman had deep faith in God, but little connection with religion. Later she embraced Church life and revisited concepts, stories and Scripture passages she’d learned as a child and still understood in childish ways. She was astonished to discover one of the beatitudes declares: “Blessed are the meek” (Matthew 5:5).

“The proudest moment in my life,” Tom Sawyer calls it. It’s a comically poignant moment in Mark Twain’s novel when Tom and Huck attend their own funeral.